How do you do a walk cycle in production?
Thats right, first you create a walk cycle where your character walking in place. When you are done you could:
1st. keyframe the location of the character / armature 
or
2nd. Add>Curve>Path and select your character Armature and then shift - select the path an ctrl - P > Follow Path 

For me it's much easier to tweak a walk cycle in place and creat the forward animation separately with one of the 2 possibilities mentioned above.